


Homestead

by rosecake



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Family, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-23 13:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10719864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: The Erso family adjusts to life on Lah'mu.





	Homestead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



> Happy SpaceSwap, I hope you enjoy the story!

Lah'mu is as desolate as they come - lovely and verdant, but located so deep in the Outer Rim that even its ecological riches haven't been enough to draw more that a few hundred settlers.

Nobody's ever paid much attention to Lah'mu. Hopefully the Empire won't either.

 

***

The house itself isn't nearly as lavish as the apartment they left behind on Coruscant, but it's still larger and nicer than the home Galen grew up in on Grange. Lyra, too, has lived in far worse places in the past and never complained about them. Galen's only concern is Jyn - she has lived in worse places as well, but she was younger then, too young to really remember it now. She's used to life on Coruscant, with its easy HoloNet access and ever-present technological wonders, and Galen worries that she'll hate the change.

"She'll be fine. Children her age adapt quickly," says Lyra.

"I know," says Galen, but his voice lacks conviction.

Lyra looks up from the crate she's been unpacking and looks out over the slopping hills that surround their new homestead. He can't really call it a farm yet, with the land still untouched, but the potential is all around them. Jyn is playing in the unsown fields, and she looks happy for the moment, content to explore the landscape of her new home while her parents work at organizing the place.

"It really is beautiful here, Galen," says Lyra, and Galen agrees. It's almost shocking how lush and green a planet can be after all that time spent on Coruscant, with its endless city sprawl. "Much nicer than a jail cell, at any rate."

She smiles at him, but it's a tired smile. Neither of them has slept well in some time.

"That's a low bar to clear," he says. His wife deserves better than to spend her days worrying about discovery and arrest, and his daughter deserves better than an isolated farm in the Outer Rim.

"Galen," she says, putting the crowbar down to come around and hold him instead. She leans her head on his shoulder and gestures out at Jyn. "Look at our daughter. She looks happy, doesn't she?"

"Yes," he says, because she does. She is animated, speaking gibberish to her doll as she drags it around her new territory, and Galen can see her smile even in the low light of evening.

"Are you happy, Lyra?" he asks, leaning his head to the side so that it rests against hers.

"Yes," she says without hesitation. "I'm just happy to have you back, Galen. The rest of it doesn't really matter."

The soft certainty in her voice soothes his nerves. Still, he worries that it isn't enough. Jyn may be happy now, but eventually her childish excitement at having a strange new planet to explore will wear off. He worries that she will grow lonely with nobody but her mother and her father to talk to, and he worries that in time she will come to resent the narrow boundaries of their new life.

Mostly, though, he worries that they haven't gone far enough, that they haven't covered their tracks well enough, and that Krennic is only days or hours from finding them.

He worries that Lah'mu is only a temporary reprieve.

 

***

The division of labor happens naturally. Galen handles the actual farming, and because he stays closer to home, he's usually also the one responsible for watching Jyn. Lyra, on the other hand, spends her days fishing, foraging, and hunting the few small creatures that live in the woods along the southern edge of their land. Lyra is far better at her allotted tasks than Galen is at farming, and she is the one to keep them from starving.

Still, Galen is determined to make the land yield _something_. Sentient beings, and even some barely sentient beings, have been farming since time immemorial. Surely Galen can manage it as well.

He watches Jyn out of the corner of his eye as he checks his records again. Half the field is ready for harvest, but the other half needs another week. Jyn has been looking forward to the harvest - she's young enough that the farming still feels like a game to her, not a chore. He wonders how long that will last.

He winces as she rips fresh foliage out of the ground.

"Careful, Stardust," he says. "We're trying to harvest the plants, not destroy them."

"These don't look right," she says, suspiciously eyeing the small, dark shreds of leaf in her hand, and Galen sighs.

"I know," he says. The leafy greens they're harvesting should be larger and lighter in color at this point. But there had been a lot of rain even by Lah'mu standards during their first month, and he's fairly certain the plants hadn't liked it. Prior to taking up farming he hadn't realized that you could _over_ water a plant, but discovering that it was a fairly common agricultural hazard did explain how he'd managed to kill some of his mother's flowers as a child despite trying his best to look after them.

"They should still be edible, though." He's fairly confident that it's true, but Jyn still looks up at him with skepticism in her eyes. "Even if they aren't, I'm sure your mother will keep us fed until the rest of the field is ready."

Jyn nods and lets the the leaves in her hand drop to the ground. She follows behind her father as he makes his way down the row, and it isn't long before she's fidgeting.

"You don't have to stay right with me if you don't want to," he tells her. "Just don't wander out of sight, okay?"

"No, I want to stay with you. Tell me a story?" she asks. The HoloNet access on Lah'mu is spotty, and most of what does come through is just Imperial propaganda he and Lyra don't want Jyn watching anyway. Without it, Galen is her new source of entertainment. He's not any better at telling stories than he is at farming, but she's barely five and doesn't make for a particularly discerning audience.

"Okay," he says. "Which one do you want to hear?"

She considers it a moment before responding, her eyes narrowed in concentration. "I don't know," she finally says. "Something about someplace exciting."

"So not a story about a farm, then?" Galen asks.

"A farm can be exciting," she says. "Maybe if gets raided by pirates?"

Galen flinches slightly, the image of stormtroopers, not pirates, crossing their fields rising to the forefront of his mind. "Not that," he says. She's hit a little too close to his nightmares for comfort. "Maybe something about Bespin?"

One of her favorite children's shows back on Coruscant had been set on Cloud City, and even now she can't get enough of stories about the massive floating cities around Bespin. Her eyes light up at the suggestion, and not for the first time he appreciates how easy it is to shift her attention. "Yes, Bespin! I want a story about Bespin!"

"Okay, okay. A long time ago…" he says, beginning with the same words he always starts with, drawing them out, buying himself a little time to come up with something that will keep his daughter entertained until her mother comes home.

 

***

Among the things Saw left for them is surveying equipment. And maps, of course, but their hemisphere of Lah'mu is virgin territory, and so the maps provided were put together from satellite imaging. Lyra knows from experience that you learn much more about a place by exploring it at ground level. Images taken from above have an unfortunate way of flattening the land out, and the resulting maps can be misleading, or at least dangerously incomplete.

For this place to ever feel like a true home she needs to properly understand it. So in her free time, when she's sure they've got enough supplies stacked up and Galen has the farming under control, she surveys their new home and the land around it. She brings back pictures, and one day Jyn is captivated by the sheer black cliffs that border the coast to the north.

"Can we go there?" she asks, and Lyra has a vision of her slipping to her death on the wet rock. As a young girl she had always thought her parents were overprotective, but she understands them better these days.

"Maybe when you're older," she answers, and Jyn pouts until Lyra promises to take her someplace just as nice.

So the next time she leaves the farm she takes Jyn with her. They follow a creek that leads into the forest, Lyra explaining the surveying equipment to Jyn as they walk along its banks. It's an area that Lyra's already surveyed properly before, so she's free to concentrate on showing Jyn how to use the equipment properly. The land slopes up so gently here that it's hard to even tell there's a rise with all the trees in the way, and the creek is too shallow and slow-moving to be a danger even if Jyn falls in. The only real threat is getting lost, and Lyra has no intention of losing sight of her child.

"Stay close to me," she says every time Jyn starts to wander too far.

Jyn fusses a bit at being called back, but as they make their way deeper into the woods she hangs closer to her mother without having to be told. The mist rising as the weather changes makes it harder to see, makes the whole forest seem a little surreal, but there's no real threat to Lyra's sense of direction. If she had to she could make her way back home blindfolded just by following the creek.

"Do you get scared when you do this by yourself?" asks Jyn.

"No, not really," says Lyra. "I've been doing this too long to get lost easily, and there aren't really any big predators on Lah'mu to watch out for. Why? Are you scared?"

"No," says Jyn, a little defensively.

Lyra reaches down and takes Jyn's hand in hers. "It's okay if you're nervous. This is the furthest you've ever come from the farm, isn't it?"

"Yeah," says Jyn quietly. She's getting tired, Lyra can tell. "I think I'm ready to go back home now, Mama."

Lyra carries her back to the farm. Jyn's old enough that she doesn't really need her mother to carry her, but she's still a child, and they'd done a lot of walking over the past few hours. Lyra's arms are tired by the time their farm is back within sight, but she doesn't mind it.

"Maybe when you're a little older we can take a longer trip together," she says. "You can go a really long way if you're willing to camp out in the wilderness for a few nights. We could explore parts of Lah'mu that even I haven't seen before. Would you like that?"

"Mmm-hm," says Jyn, mumbling a sleepy affirmative. She's definitely too young for a hike like that now, but Lyra isn't really sure how old she would need to be to handle it. Maybe eight? Or ten?

It doesn't really matter though. Lah'mu isn't going anywhere, they can wait as long as they need to.

 

***

Her mother is out surveying and hasn't come back yet, but her father has her do a drill in the cave anyway. They do a drill every week, usually with both her parents, but if one if them is busy the other will do it alone. They've never skipped a week. It's boring, it's been boring for ages now, since after the first couple of times. But her parents always get really tense about it, so she does it like they tell her to. If she takes it seriously it's over fast enough.

Today her father assures her that she's done it perfectly. He carries her back to the farm in his arms, and the cave really isn't all that far so it's not like she needs to be carried, but she lets him do it anyway.

"Can we try a different drill next time?" she asks. "Maybe down at the beach? There are a lot of places to hide in the rocks by the beach, it's sort of the same."

Her father takes a long time before he answers.

"It's not just about hiding, Jyn," he says. "It's the same place every time because that's where you need to go if something happens. It's important that it's always the same place. You understand that, right?"

Jyn sighs. "Yes."

"We can walk down the coast tomorrow, though, if you want. After I'm done in the fields," he says.

"Yeah, okay," says Jyn. She likes the beach, even if it's not going to get her out of her drills. The water is nice, and she likes playing in the black sand along the shore. There's only a thin strip of it before the ground turns rocky, even at low tide, but there's enough of it to build castles with.

She's tired, and she lets her head rest against her father's chest. She's half asleep by the time her father speaks.

"Jyn, are you happy here?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says. It's a weird question out of nowhere, but her father does that sometimes.

"You don't miss Coruscant?"

She misses the HoloNet, sometimes, and having her own droid. The farm droid is the most boring droid she's ever seen. She does like being able to go outside, though. There hadn't even really been an outside at all on Coruscant, just endless buildings and walkways and the constant mass of strangers pushing past her and her mother any time they left the apartment. Lah'mu reminds her of the time her mother took her to Alpinn, only better, because this time her father is with her as well. And she would much rather spend time with her parents than with the HoloNet or droids.

"Not really," she says, shifting slightly in her father's arms. "I like it here better."

She'd hardly ever gotten to see her father when they'd lived on Coruscant. Even her mother had been distant and distracted, like she was only half there somehow.

"I'm glad, Stardust," he says. He does sound glad, Jyn can hear it in his voice, and it makes her happy too.

 

***

Galen sits next to Lyra, their backs against the wall of the house, watching with her as Jyn plays in the light rain. More of a fine mist, really, but the weather is starting to turn cold, and they'll have to call her into the house soon so she doesn't catch a cold. She looks like she's enjoying herself, though, and Galen doesn't want to interrupt her before he has to.

"Are you alright?" asks Lyra. He turns and looks at her, unsure of where the question came from.

"You look concerned," she says.

He rubs a hand over his face, over the beard he's let grow in. "It's nothing," he says.

Lyra looks unconvinced. "Galen."

He looks back over to Jyn, playing in the fields. "I've been thinking about Jyn. About her future. She's happy here for now, at least I _think_ she's happy, but this can't last forever."

Lyra sighs and puts a hand on the back of his neck. "Nothing lasts forever. But we've been here years now with no sign of the Empire."

They still do the drills with Jyn every week. Even if there's a small, dangerously hopeful part of Galen that wants to think of all the preparation as a matter of _if_ the Empire finds them, not _when_.

"I'm not just worried about the Empire finding us," says Galen. He will always worry about that, but he has other concerns as well. "Even if we are safe here, she's getting older. There's going to be a time when homeschooling isn't enough, when we aren't enough. She's going to need people who aren't her parents around."  
"She's still young, Galen." Lyra strokes the back of his neck as she speaks. "When she's older she'll understand the need for secrecy better. We can get new credentials, move to a city someplace in the Outer Rim, and blend in with the crowd. Then she can get a degree, get a job, find somebody to fall in love with. We'll have to be careful, but it's possible. And we can cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Yes. Maybe," says Galen. He pulls his knees in closer to his chest and sighs. "My mother gave me an education, a life outside Grange. All I've given Jyn, and you, is a life in hiding."

Lyra slips her hand down to Galen's shoulder and pulls him closer so that they're leaning against each other. "There are far worse places to raise a child than a farm on Lah'mu," she says. "Right now most of the galaxy is being torn up by war and conquest. We may only have ourselves out here, Galen, but it's peaceful. That's worth a lot."

"I know," he says. Jyn was born in a prison cell on Vallt. He knows there are worse ways her life could have turned out.

"We've done as much as we can for her." She gestures at their daughter, burying her doll again in the dirt. It's a miracle she hasn't lost it yet. "She's safer than a lot of children are right now."

"I know, you're right," he says. Just the sound of Lyra's voice is as calming as what she's saying. She runs her hand along his arm, and he can feel the tension start to ease out of him. His concerns don't fully leave him, they never really do, but they're no longer as pressing.

By the time Jyn walks up to them, he's ready with an easy smile for her. "I'm ready to go inside now," she says.

"Good," says Galen. "Let's go get you dry and warm."

And safe, at least for now. 

***

In the end, though, there is no place safe from the Empire.


End file.
